Location
    
Harmonized Skies 2025 – Zurich
  
  

    
Guests
    
Amanda Boekholt, Andreea Perca, Christoph Selig, Bobby Healy, Munish Khurana, Thorsten Indra
  
  

    
Interviewer
    
Riva Pinto
  

U-space between vision and reality

The debate around U-space usually moves somewhere between technical requirements, regulatory hurdles and the question of how drones can be integrated into the airspace in a meaningful and safe way. At this year’s Harmonized Skies event in Zurich, it became clear how closely these three dimensions are linked, but also that there are other factors that are important in this context. LINA was also represented and used the opportunity to gather perspectives from regulation, industry, technology and infrastructure. What emerges is a clear picture: the vision of a harmonized and safe low-altitude airspace is within reach, but the path towards it is fragmented, politically charged and full of structural obstacles. At the same time, there is striking agreement on what would need to happen to move things forward.

From the very first conversations it becomes clear that the problem is not a lack of ideas, but a lack of shared foundations. Amanda Boekholt from the Federal Office of Civil Aviation describes the situation like this: “The most challenging thing is that we lack harmonization between one country and another.” In Zurich, drones are already flying under defined procedures, while other states are at different stages, with different approaches. At the same time, she points to a technical core. In an urban environment where helicopters, emergency services and drones share the sky, it has to be clear who is where. What is needed is “conspicuity”, visibility in the airspace. U-space is supposed to create exactly that.

Andreea Perca from Skyguide also puts the focus on the airspace side. In terms of ground risk, a lot has happened in recent years, but “in the airspace part, we need more”. Outside controlled zones there is often no complete picture of crewed aviation. Without digital visibility of existing air traffic or detect and avoid systems, uncrewed operations can only be integrated to a limited extent. Munish Khurana from EUROCONTROL calls this one of the biggest challenges. “One challenge I see is the interoperability, which is the exchange of data between the various actors,” he explains. Also Khurana mentions the importance of “electronic conspicuity” in this context, so the ability to know at all times where a drone is located and whether it is moving as planned.

Even if these systems worked perfectly, a central question would remain: do cities and their residents actually want drones overhead. For Amanda Boekholt, the answer is clear. Public acceptance, she says, “is key”. Experience shows that approval is higher where the benefit is obvious, for example when medical samples or medication are transported between hospitals by drone. It is crucial to communicate openly that what these drones are doing is not to spy, but to serve a public interest. Andreea Perca stresses that the issue is not only one of technology, but of perceived value. “The drone operation needs to have an added value in the whole chain,” she says. Where drones are seen primarily as a source of noise or as a threat to privacy, it is easy to mobilise resistance. In places where drones are used regularly and visibly, there are signs “that it’s just a matter of getting used to them”.

Munish Khurana recalls an example from the pandemic. During Covid, he explains, a drone operator delivered food every day to older residents in a small village in Ireland who were not allowed to leave their homes. At first, there was no real choice. Later, when restrictions were lifted, people were asked whether the service should stop. “They said no, don’t stop,” he recalls. For him, this story is emblematic. “Seeing is believing,” he says. Communities constantly renegotiate how much intervention they accept when the benefit is tangible. Thorsten Indra from HHLA Sky sees a clear responsibility on the side of industry and authorities. “I think it is about raising awareness” he says. People tend to be sceptical when something is unfamiliar to them. Transparency about use cases, clear rules and instruments such as broadcast remote ID can help to distinguish legitimate operations from abusive ones.

At the same time, companies are struggling with very concrete organisational and economic obstacles. For Christoph Selig from Unisphere, one of the biggest problems is “that the digital infrastructure is not yet in place”. As long as only a single operator is active in a given area, much can be arranged bilaterally with the competent authority. “As soon as there are several drone operators and coordination becomes necessary, that simply doesn’t exist yet in most cities.” U-space is designed as a concept for areas with high complexity and traffic density, yet many current applications take place in regions that may never be declared U-space, such as along rail corridors or offshore routes. “We need traffic management everywhere, a drone traffic management system that provides these basic functions” says Selig. Only then will it become apparent in which regions a designated U-space would really make sense.

Bobby Healy, founder of the delivery drone company Manna, formulates his point of view: Europe’s problem is less about technology than about implementation. “We have no permission to fly anywhere in Europe because there’s no solution digitally for us to fly,” he says. The roles of air navigation service providers, regulators and service providers are not yet set up in a way that allows scalable drone operations to become reality quickly. “The fear of public acceptance is why there’s no political will,” Healy argues. In his view, U-space is “a comprehensive, well thought out thing”, but the political will to fund it and actually use it is missing. Where that does not happen, innovation moves on. Manna now has “permission to fly in the USA BVLOS, scalable way”, while in Europe, he says, the attitude is still to wait and see.

Across all these perspectives, the view is directed towards the future. For Amanda Boekholt, that future starts locally. “First step is really to have U-space in Zurich and then developing other U-space airspaces,” she says. In parallel, work is underway to make crewed aviation fully visible in digital systems. Thorsten Indra points to the plan “that by 2030 Switzerland should achieve electronic visibility across its entire airspace.” Only when both sides can see each other will drones be able to react to crewed traffic, and vice versa. In the long term, there could be situations in which an uncrewed search mission takes priority over a leisure flight because its purpose is more critical. For Munish Khurana, U-space is therefore best understood as a tool. “U-space is a means to an end,” he says. It enables drone operations, but these are only meaningful where they make a real difference, whether in inspections, logistics or missions in hard-to-reach areas.

What is clear is that the challenges are complex: missing digital infrastructure, the need for harmonization, clearly defined roles, political decision making, public communication and trust. At the same time, the interviewees share something fundamental: the conviction that working towards U-space and related digital frameworks can create the conditions under which drone operations can grow safely and responsibly. The discussions show that progress does not happen through technology alone, but through the interaction of regulation, industry and society, and through places where this future can be tried out under real conditions. U-space will not appear overnight, yet the conversations in Zurich suggest that the direction of travel is already set: towards a lower airspace that is more transparent, more coordinated and more purpose driven. How quickly that vision takes shape will depend less on a single breakthrough than on many small, coordinated steps, and on the willingness of all actors to share the sky.